MILORD, Susan 1954-

PERSONAL: Born August 28, 1954, in Norwalk, CT; daughter of Jerry (a graphic designer, illustrator, and cartoonist) and Anne (an actress; maiden name, Pitoniak) Milord; married Skip Gorman (a folk musician), August 18, 1979; children: Angus Gorman. Education: Attended Escuela de Diseno y Artesanias, 1971-72, and University of New Mexico, 1973-74; Kansas City Art Institute, B.F.A., 1977. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening, sewing and other needle crafts, cooking, reading.

ADDRESSES: Home—VT. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Houghton Mifflin, 222 Berkeley St., Boston, MA 02116.

CAREER: Author and illustrator. Family Circle, New York, NY, staff designer, 1977-79; freelance graphic designer, 1977—. Graphic designer for advertising agencies, 1980-83. Instructor, children's after-school art program, beginning 1990; director of summer arts program, 1991-92.

MEMBER: Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators, Parent-Teacher Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: "The One" Award of Excellence, 1983, for graphic design; Parents' Choice Gold Award, 1989, for Kids' Nature Book: 365 Indoor/Outdoor Activities and Experiences; Skipping Stones book award in multicultural/international category, 1995, for Tales Alive! Ten Multicultural Folktales with Activities.

WRITINGS:

(Self-illustrated) The Kids' Nature Book: 365 Indoor/Outdoor Activities and Experiences, Williamson (Charlotte, VT), 1989, revised edition, 1996.

(Self-illustrated) Adventures in Art: Art and CraftExperiences for Seven-to-Fourteen-Year-Olds, Williamson (Charlotte, VT), 1990, revised edition, 1997.

(Self-illustrated) Hands around the World: 365Creative Ways to Build Cultural Awareness and Global Respect, Williamson (Charlotte, VT), 1992.

Tales Alive! Ten Multicultural Folktales with Activities, illustrated by Michael Donato, Williamson (Charlotte, VT), 1995.

(Reteller) Tales of the Shimmering Sky: Ten GlobalFolktales with Activities, illustrated by JoAnn E. Kitchel, Williamson (Charlotte, VT), 1996.

Tales Alive! Bird Tales from Near and Far, illustrated by Linda S. Wingerter, Williamson (Charlotte, VT), 1998.

Mexico! Forty Activities to Experience Mexico Past and Present, illustrations by Michael Kline, Williamson (Charlotte, VT), 1999.

(Reteller) The Ghost on the Hearth, illustrated by Linda Dabcovich, Vermont Folklife Center (Middlebury, VT), 2002.

(Self-illustrated) Willa the Wonderful, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2003.

Three about Thurston (short stories), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2004.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Also author of short fiction.

SIDELIGHTS: Author and illustrator Susan Milord has channeled her creativity into a number of books for young readers, among them several short-story collections and activity books, as well as the picture books Willa the Wonderful and The Ghost on the Hearth. In praise of Willa the Wonderful, in which a young pig with dreams of becoming a fairy princess decides to dress the part at school, a Publishers Weekly contributor crowned Milord's Willa character "a porcine charmer who gets much more than she bargains for." The resourceful Willa, who remains undaunted when she has to remove her homemade fairy wings to fit on the school bus and figures that dirt is just fine in place of fairy dust in her fairy sack, stars in what a Kirkus Reviews critic described as Milord's "spirited and welcome picture-book debut." Also praised by the Kirkus Reviews critic were Milord's pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations, which the critic found "active and sweet."

Beginning her writing career as a nonfiction author who draws inspiration from many cultures, Milord once told CA: "Not surprisingly, the topics I've covered in my books reflect subjects of lifelong interest. Moving to rural New Mexico when I was seven years old, I quickly cultivated a keen appreciation of nature. It was then, too, that I got my first taste of other cultures, specifically the Hispanic and Native-American cultures that are very much alive in that state. As a teenager, I attended schools in both England and Mexico, further broadening my outlook. Since I come from an artistic family, it's no wonder my interest in the arts is so strong."

Milord began her writing career "quite by accident," she once admitted. "I was tinkering with ways to put my training as a graphic designer to use when I had an idea for a calendar that was inspired by my young son's interest in the natural world. Whereas the color illustrations each month would be eye-catching and appealing, I thought I might include simple suggestions for ways to appreciate nature for each day of each month. . . . At the same time, I realized a collection of suggestions such as these would be valuable from year to year. From that moment, it was just a matter of turning all my thoughts into words," she explained of the creation of The Kids' Nature Book: 365 Indoor/Outdoor Activities and Experiences.

From The Kids' Nature Book, Milord has gone on to publish several other activity books, including Adventures in Art: Art and Craft Experiences for Seven-to-Fourteen-Year-Olds, Mexico! Fifty Activities to Experience Mexico Past and Present, and Hands around the World: 365 Creative Ways to Build Cultural Awareness and Global Respect. In Adventures in Art, Milord includes 101 different crafts, each accompanied by a notation estimating the approximate time needed. Hands around the World, published in 1993, contains projects ranging from designing a Muslim prayer rug to holding a local Olympics to carving an Asian chop, or signature emblem. Praising the book as "lively and entertaining," School Library Journal contributor Marilyn Makowski added that Hands around the World works as an excellent teacher resource or guide for classroom activities. Critic Julie Corsaro praised the book in Booklist, noting that Milord's "upbeat, multi-cultural" offering is especially valuable for its resource lists and inclusion of child-oriented activities.

Stories and projects are combined in Milord's "Tales Alive!" books, which include Ten Multicultural Folk-tales with Activities and Bird Tales from Near and Far. In Ten Multicultural Folktales, stories from Argentina, Turkey, Australia, and other parts of the globe are enhanced by crafts that allow young readers to more fully appreciate the cultural background that produced the story. Praising the book as "nicely balanced" between folktale and project, Booklist contributor Mary Harris Veeder added that the stories selected are "pleasantly varied" while Milord's activity suggestions often extend beyond merely "making . . . an object" to an intellectual activity such as riddle-devising. Similar in scope, Bird Tales from Near and Far also includes many interesting bird facts, as well as six "playful" stories from Iroquois, Ethiopian, Japanese, Thai, Yemeni, and Ukrainian folk traditions that "are geared to younger children," according to a Booklist contributor. While noting that several of the activities require adult supervision and power tools or cooking appliances, School Library Journal reviewer Lisa Wu Stowe found the volume "a pleasant way to introduce children to birds as well as to different cultures," while a Kirkus Reviews critic dubbed Bird Tales from Near and Far "an ethereal collection of avian folklore."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Bookseller, March, 1991.

Booklist, October, 1989; January 1, 1993, Julie Corsaro, review of Hands around the World: 365 Creative Ways to Build Cultural Awareness andGlobal Respect, p. 804; April 15, 1995, Mary Harris Veeder, review of Tales Alive! Ten Multicultural Folktales with Activities, p. 1495; February 15, 1999, review of Tales Alive! Bird Tales from Near and Far, p. 1066.

Curriculum Review, March, 1993, review of Hands around the World, p. 27.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1998, review of Tales Alive!Bird Tales from Near and Far, p. 969; April 1, 2003, review of Willa the Wonderful, p. 537.

Publishers Weekly, July 22, 1996, review of Tales of the Shimmering Sky, p. 243; August 10, 1998, review of Tales Alive! Bird Tales from Near and Far, p. 390; February 24, 2003, review of Willa the Wonderful, p. 71.

School Library Journal, October, 1989, J. J. Votapka, review of The Kids' Nature Book: 365 Indoor/Outdoor Activities and Experiences, p. 106; July, 1991, Fran Powell, review of Adventures in Art: Art and Craft Experiences for Seven-to-Fourteen-Year-Olds, p. 84; January, 1993, Marilyn Makowski, review of Hands around the World, p. 93; March, 1995, Kathleen Odean, review of Tales Alive! Ten Multicultural Folktales, pp. 198-199; February, 1997, Sabrina L. Fraunfelter, review of Tales of the Shimmering Sky, p. 94; November, 1998, Lisa Wu Stowe, review of Tales Alive! Bird Tales from Near and Far, p. 108; May, 1999, Pam Gosner, review of Mexico! Fifty Activities to Experience Mexico Past and Present, p. 140; December, 2003, Linda Ludke, review of The Ghost on the Hearth, p. 121.

Skipping Stones, spring-summer, 1995, Arun Toke, review of Tales Alive! Ten Multicultural Folktales with Activities, p. 6.*